I’ve been following the debate over at Ed Brill’s blog regarding Domino vs SharePoint redux, a week in the field. This debate is scaring me as the focus is just not correct. I know the Domino guys, have that Notes/Domino as their prime concern because of the experience they have with the product. But the fact remains that the Notes/Domino combination is not Portal technology, which Sharepoint is (even though they have removed that term from the name of the current version).
WebSphere Portal was placed into the Lotus brand and it is about to become a core part of the new Lotus Notes strategic platform through Lotus Expeditor. Lotus Notes 8 and Sametime 7.5 has been developed using Lotus Expeditor 6.1. Am in the process of gaining confirmation from Cisco regarding when the Cisco Unified Personal Communicator will be shipped based on Lotus Expeditor.
The ability to create composite applications, with multiple technologies, and have these applications accessible across multiple platforms and pervasive devices seems to be foreign to some of the Lotus Notes/Domino guys. The main discussion, in the comments on Ed’s blog was around Workflow, there is an excellent article on user created and managed workflow, in WebSphere Portal 6 at developerWorks here, I must try it out and have it available to demonstrate to clients.
However, WebSphere Portal is not completely dependent on Lotus Domino infrastructure and it competes in its own right against Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007. The new WebSphere Portal Collaboration and WebSphere Portal Enterprise offerings include a number of products inclusive of some of the Lotus Domino based infrastructure components. Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections whilst also being stand alone products reinforce the potential strategic investment that an organisation is making with the Lotus brand and WebSphere Portal.
If WebSphere Portal is part of the Lotus brand then Lotus people should be promoting it. Leading with Lotus Notes and Domino will surely push existing Microsoft Exchange clients closer to Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services.
What excites me about what is occurring in Lotus, is the products evolving that are not based on Domino and Lotus Script!
Nick Hortovanyi's blog 
The fundamental problem is that there is no direct competition between something in Lotus’s portfolio and MOSS. For simplicity, many want to find a direct comparison, but that would commoditize the whole segment.
There are really three pieces of the Lotus portfolio that can compete with SharePoint… and it is the business requirements that define which one I would talk about with a customer.
I am new to the world of Lotus. And the list of product names is just overwhelming to me. Can someone give me pointers on where I can get a brief intro to each of the following (not in an isolated way, rather in a comparative way).
thanks,
Gopi
——
IBM Lotus Domino Document Manager 7
IBM Lotus QuickPlace
IBM Lotus Workflow 7
IBM Workplace
IBM® Workplace Collaboration Services (WCS)
Lotus SameTime
Websphere Portal
Lotus Quickr
Lotus Connections
This was a post to one of Ed Brill’s other comments. Ed needs to install MOSS and Exchange and understand what he is talking about…
…I would have thought this would have picked up post Lotusphere 2007 after seeing all the demos of Domino 8 (their rather sad version of Outlook 2002), Connections (their sad version of My Sites) and Quickr (their sad copy of WSS). Too bad have to resort to turning their innovation into imitation.
If this is Tom Moen that is on Linked In, I think you are now working at Microsoft.. would appreciate if Microsoft could give us a comparison that is not using Microsoft FUD between WebSphere Portal and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007… Were you working at Filenet when IBM purchased the organisation?